Security Aide Quit as Judge In a Deal

Published: July 29, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 28—
A crucial overseer of the efforts to overhaul the screening of airline passengers resigned four years ago from the New Hampshire Supreme Court to avoid prosecution over his conduct on the bench.

The official, W. Stephen Thayer III, left the court in a deal with prosecutors. He is now deputy chief of the Office of National Risk Assessment at the Transportation Security Administration.

Mr. Thayer resurrected his career with work at a conservative group here before moving to the risk assessment office, where he supervises the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System. The system had technical problems and met resistance from privacy advocates. It was returned to its planners this month for more work.

The project, Capps II, developed software to bar any passenger from boarding a plane if a computer analysis of terrorist watch lists and private commercial records judged him a security threat. Congressional auditors have criticized the program.

The administration named Mr. Thayer to oversee the project last summer with little fanfare. His fast-moving career -- United States attorney at 35 and State Supreme Court justice at 40 --halted on March 31, 2000, when he resigned in a deal with Attorney General Philip T. McLaughlin of New Hampshire.

In return for the resignation, Mr. McLaughlin agreed to drop plans for an indictment. In a report, Mr. McLaughlin criticized Mr. Thayer for participating in deliberations on a case that he was recused from. Mr. McLaughlin also said he would have sought felony or misdemeanor charges against Mr. Thayer for reportedly trying to influence the choice of a judge to hear his wife's appeal of their divorce and threatening fellow justices if they allowed his conduct to be reported to oversight groups.

''I committed no criminal act,'' Mr. Thayer said at the time.

Mr. McLaughlin had decided to seek the criminal indictment when Mr. Thayer volunteered to resign.

A spokesman for the transportation authority, Mark O. Hatfield Jr., said Mr. Thayer was qualified for his post because he had helped the American Conservative Union organize a panel with other conservative and liberal groups to lobby on the handling of citizens' personal information, including Capps II.

''That was as direct involvement in that field as you can get,'' Mr. Hatfield said.